A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism Quotes

“Defenders of hell must overcome the prima facie absurdity of the following conjunction: God loves every one of His creatures with a profound and unwavering benevolence; and He wills upon some of these creatures the very worst kind of evil conceivable, and He wills that they suffer it for all eternity, even though it cannot possibly do them any good, since it never culminates in anything but more of the same. Defenders of [another] version of the doctrine of hell face different challenges. Because they hold that damnation originates in the creature’s own rejection of God, they must accept that some creatures freely reject God forever, and that God cannot legitimately overcome this free rejection of Him (despite potentially infinite time in which to work on their intransigence). That someone created in the divine image, and hence naturally ordered towards the good, should eternally reject the perfect good strikes us as prima facie unlikely, especially if God continues unremittingly to seek the creature’s repentance. Furthermore, that an omnipotent and omniscient God should eternally fail to find a morally legitimate way to transform an unwilling creature’s heart strikes us as prima facie dubious.”
― Robert Wild, A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism

“What Chesterton didn’t realize or fess up to was that the threat of damnation is primarily a motivator for a person to join a particular Christian denomination and accept a particular soteriology (salvation theology), rather than a universal motivator to do good. I think people are motivated in a more universal fashion to do good by virtue of the fact that joys shared are doubled, while sorrows shared are halved. We are beings who have the same physical and psychological needs, fears, and pleasures. Few people enjoy having physical or psychological pains inflicted on them in word or deed; while the vast majority enjoy similar physical and psychological pleasures. Fear of damnation as I said seems to create more sects and divisions, each of which insists in the full acceptance of their soteriological beliefs as the only way to avoid damnation.”
― Robert Wild, A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism

“I am a convinced Universalist. I believe that in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God. I want to set down not the arguments of others but the thoughts which have persuaded me personally of universal salvation. First, there is the fact that there are things in the New Testament which more than justify this belief. Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men to myself.” Paul writes to the Romans: “God consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy on all.” He writes to the Corinthians, “As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be saved.” I believe that it is impossible to set limits to the grace of God. I believe that not only in this world, but in any other world there may be, the grace of God is still effective, still operative, still at work. I do not believe that the operation of the grace of God is limited to this world. I believe that the grace of God is as wide as the universe. I believe implicitly in the ultimate and complete triumph of God, the time when all things will be subject to him, and when God will be everything to everyone (1 Cor 15: 24–28). For me this has certain consequences. If one man remains outside the love of God at the end of time, it means that that one man has defeated the love of God—and that is impossible. Further, there is only one way in which we can think of the triumph of God. If God was no more than a King or Judge, then it would be possible to speak of his triumph, if his enemies were agonizing in hell or were totally and completely obliterated and wiped out. But God is not only King and Judge; God is Father—he is indeed Father more than anything else. No father could be happy while there were members of his family for ever in agony. No father would count it a triumph to obliterate the disobedient members of his family. The only triumph a father can know is to have all his family back home. The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love. The only possible final triumph is a universe loved by and in love with God.”
― Robert Wild, A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism

“The logic of hell is nothing other than the logic of human free will, in so far as this is identical with freedom of choice. The theological argument runs as follows: “God, whose being is love, preserves our human freedom, for freedom is the condition of love. Although God’s love goes, and has gone, to the uttermost, plumbing the depth of hell, the possibility remains for each human being of a final rejection of God, and so of eternal life.” Let us gather some arguments against this logic of hell. The first conclusion, it seems to me, is that it is inhumane, for there are not many people who can enjoy free will where their eternal fate in heaven or hell is concerned. Anyone who faces men and women with the choice of heaven or hell, does not merely expect too much of them. It leaves them in a state of uncertainty, because we cannot base the assurance of our salvation on the shaky ground of our own decision. Is the presupposition of this logic of hell perhaps an illusion—the presupposition that it all depends on the human beings’ free will? The logic of hell seems to me not merely inhumane but also extremely atheistic: here the human being in his freedom of choice is his own lord and god. His own will is his heaven—or his hell. God is merely the accessory who puts that will into effect. If I decide for heaven, God must put me there; if I decide for hell, he has to leave me there. If God has to abide by our free decision, then we can do with him what we like. Is that “the love of God?” Free human beings forge their own happiness and are their own executioners. They do not just dispose over their lives here; they decide on their eternal destinies as well. So they have no need of any God at all. After God has perhaps created us free as we are, he leaves us to our fate. Carried to this ultimate conclusion, the logic of hell is secular humanism, as Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche already perceived a long time ago. The Christian doctrine of hell is to be found in the gospel of Christ’s descent into hell. In the crucified Christ we see what hell is, because through him it has been overcome. Judgment is not God’s last word. Judgment established in the world the divine righteousness on which the new creation is to be built. But God’s last word is “Behold I make all things new” (Rev 21: 5). From this no one is excluded. Love is God’s compassion with the lost. Transforming grace is God’s punishment for sinners. It is not the right to choose that defines the reality of human freedom. It is the doing of the good.”
― Robert Wild, A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism

“There exists with Him a single love and compassion which is spread out over all creation, a love which is without alteration, timeless and everlasting. No part belonging to any single one of all rational beings will be lost.”
― Robert Wild, A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism

“If the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of the race, the unceasing obligation of man to love God and his fellow-creatures, the lordship and mission of Christ the Saviour of the world, the immortality of all mankind [emphasis added], are not positive doctrines of the New Testament, then no doctrines, no precepts, no principles can be proved from it. This is the very question at issue between Universalists and those who deny that their faith has its foundations in the New Testament. As the Lord liveth, the now “open questions” will one day be settled, and settled on the side of the divine Beneficence. The love of God in Christ has come into the world, and will not go out of it until its work is here done; love that is long suffering, that rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; that beareth, believeth, hopeth and endureth all things, and that never faileth; love that will bring the last lost one home, that will obliterate all the hells, and people all the heavens in the universe.”
― Robert Wild, A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism

“Even if externally the two realms were quite separate, yet so high of degree of bliss is not as such compatible with entire ignorance of others’ misery, the more so if the separation itself is the result purely of a general judgment, at which both sides were present, which means conscious of each other. Now if we attribute to the blessed a knowledge of the state of the damned, it cannot be a knowledge unmixed with sympathy. If the perfecting of our nature is not to move backwards, sympathy must be such as to embrace the whole human race, and when extended to the damned must of necessity be a disturbing element in bliss, all the more that, unlike similar feelings in this life, it is untouched by hope.” And again from Schleiermacher: “From whichever side we view it, then, there are great difficulties in thinking that the finite issue of redemption is such that some thereby obtain highest bliss, while others (on the ordinary view, indeed the majority of the human race) are lost in irrevocable misery. We ought not to retain such an idea without decisive testimony to the fact that it was this that Christ Himself looked forward; and such testimony is wholly lacking. Hence we ought at least to admit that through the power of redemption there will one day be a universal restoration of all souls.”
― Robert Wild, A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism